Christopher Nolan‘s upcoming film has by no means, a small premise. An adaptation of the classic “The Odyssey,” the film includes a large cast of some of the biggest Hollywood stars. But cast member John Leguizamo says Nolan still manages to make the production feel like an independent film.

“Dude, you know the thing is, okay he’s got a crazy budget, it’s not small, but he runs [it] like an indie film because he’s not doing it by committee, he’s not doing it by what the studio says,” Leguizamo said in a recent interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“He’s like an indie filmmaker but with crazy money,” he added.

“The Odyssey” stars Matt Damon as Odysseus in a cast that also includes Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Benny Safdie and Jon Bernthal.

The film is “a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new Imax film technology. The film brings Homer’s foundational saga to Imax film screens for the first time,” according to Universal.

Nolan’s filmography includes bigger, blockbuster-type films like “Oppenheimer,” “Interstellar” and “Inception.” “I’m drawn to working at a large scale because I know how fragile the opportunity to marshal those resources is,” Nolan said in an interview with Time in 2024. “I know that there are so many filmmakers out there in the world who would give their eye teeth to have the resources I put together, and I feel I have the responsibility to use them in the most productive and interesting way.”

But the filmmaker pays attention to independent films, naming “Aftersun” and “Past Lives” in the same interview as some of the recent smaller-scale films that he enjoyed.

Cillian Murphy, who led Nolan’s previous film “Oppenheimer,” has previously commended the director’s collaboration with actors and how he allows for experimentation.

“He is brilliant with actors, understands actors, loves actors, really believes in actors and what they can bring to the story and to the character. So an awful lot of the time we’ll just find it. We’ll be shooting, but we’ll be finding the scene, and he’ll let us experiment and explore stuff,” Murphy said to Collider.

“The Odyssey” releases in theaters July 17, 2026. Nolan wrote the screenplay and produced the film with Emma Thomas.